Oct 6, 2011

Excellent speech by Lew Rockwell

(Note: Sorry about the weird background on the text here! Don't know how to fix it!)

I have recently started reading Lew Rockwell's book: Speaking of Liberty. Absolutely awesome so far. I visit this man's website lewrockwell.com every day to keep up on different issues of economic and social importance, and always find great stuff there.

Today, he posted a speech he gaveon Oct. 1st. The talk was called The Fascist Threat I feel it is one of the best examples of Lew's speeches, and perhaps one of the most important considering the place we find ourselves today as people dealing with all of these threats and realities concerning our struggle for "sweet liberty," as Lew puts it.

This speech is not only a complete dismantling of the notion that we live in the society of checks and balances our civics classes taught us, but an illumination on the true nature of the fascist State before us, among us, and within us. This transformation has been happening incrementally for a very long time, and "youngsters" (ha!) like myself know nothing else. The debate, as Lew points out eloquently, is simply who the State will coddle and lavish with vast tax breaks, rewards, monopolies, and contracts.

Who will the State protect and reward? The producers (entrepreneurs, investors, business owners--large or small) or the producers (labor)? This false debate is a symptom of the common political paradigm that the State should have any say at all in these issues. And it ignores the elephant in the room: the consumers! Even Joe Dirt had the wisdom to understand the importance of this part of the equation:

That is not to say we as consumers need any coddling from the State. Both groups of the production equation--investor/owner and labor do a quite satisfactory job when allowed to operate in a true free market, unhampered by State interventions, of responding to consumer demand. Only by changing our paradigm about the role of the State will we be able to find true liberty economically and socially.